Orson F. Whitney April 1921

Orson F. Whitney was a very prolific Latter-day Saint. Born on July 1, 1855, to Horace Whitney and Helen Mar Kimball, Orson was a man of many talents. He was a father of nine children. He was a bishop and on the city council in Salt Lake. He went on a few missions; first he went to Ohio and Pennsylvania, and later he was called to go to Europe to help oversee the Millennial star. He was an apostle for 25 years, from April 9, 1906, to his death on May 16, 1931. But probably one of his biggest contributions to the world is the fact that he is considered by many to be the father of latter-day saint literature. His work includes multiple works of biographies, hymns, sermons and poetry, inspiring thousands of saints in his lifetime and beyond. He once said about Latter-Day Saints, "We will yet have Milton's and Shakespeare's of our own." 

I already did a post about a poem of his, but I wanted to do a conference talk as well. This one was delivered in April of 1921, and discusses the works of himself, missionaries, church leaders, and spiritual leaders from other religious groups. I have included some minor references to help the reader better understand the context of the talk.

Elder Orson F. Whitney

Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

For the past fifteen years I have been preaching the Gospel in the Stakes of Zion, and after living on "stakes" all that length of time, 1 need, and it seems I am to have, a change of diet. If you wish to know how I feel about the call that has come to me, I will tell you: I rejoice in it. I am going with a glad heart and a cheerful countenance to do my duty — is I have done it here — on the other side of the world.

Early Missions and Appointments

This will not be my first mission as an Elder of the Church. My first mission of all was to the United States, from 1876 to 1878, I labored five or six months in Pennsylvania, and then went to Ohio, my father's native State, where the Whitney family embraced the Gospel in early days. While I was in Ohio my mother wrote to me asking why I did not return. Said she: "AH the missionaries who went with you or went at the same time that you! did, are back home. Why don't you come?" I answered: "Because I have not been released; and I shall stay here until I receive, without any solicitation on my part, an honorable release from the Presidency of the Church." Having been honorably released, I returned and was made a Ward Bishop. 1 served in the Bishopric for nearly twenty-eight years, and in April 1906 was called into the position that I now occupy. Meanwhile, from the autumn of 1881 until the summer of 1883, I filled a mission in Great Britain, laboring most of the time as assistant editor of the Millennial Star.

No Time Limit

No time limit was placed upon my missions. I never felt that 1 ought to ask for a release or come home until the servants of the Lord presiding over me said: "It is enough; you are at liberty to return."

An impression now prevails in the mission fields among some of our young elders, that they were called to labor for a set time; and after that time has expired — say eighteen or twenty months — they seem to think they are entitled to a release, and some even ask for it. This is contrary to my traditions and training. I have never called myself upon a mission; have never appointed myself to an office; and have never thought it my privilege to resign or ask to be relieved of any responsibility in connection with the Lord's work. I have responded to every call made upon me thus far, and I expect to do so as long as I live.

Labors of the Twelve

In times past some of our brethren and sisters have worried over the question of the labors of the Twelve apostles. They have hinted that we ought to be out preaching the gospel in the world — evidently overlooking the fact that the Twelve travel under the direction of the First Presidency; that they do not call themselves upon missions, but have to wait until they are sent. I have never known one of the apostles to refuse or even hesitate to respond to any call that came to him from rightful authority. Years ago, I said from this stand, quoting a little verse that we sometimes sing:

"I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord,

On mountain on land or on sea; 

I'll say what you want me to say, dear Lord,

I'll be what you want me to be."*

And I paraphrased it thus:

I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord,

I'll go whenever you say.

 But till I am sent I'm not going to go —

I'll stay where you want me to stay.

Now that I have been appointed to go, I am going; and I promise President Grant and his counselors, and you my brethren and sisters, that I shall go with a free will and with joy in my heart, having no desire to be released at the expiration of any set time. I leave that with the Lord. I am going where he wants me to go and will stay there as long as he wants me to stay. This is God's work, and I know it, and I am proud and happy to be engaged in it.

Alma's Wish

I would like to read you a few paragraphs from the Book of Mormon. A Prophet named Alma, standing upon the American Continent seventy-six years before the birth of the Savior, uttered these wonderful words:

"O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people;

"Yea, I would declare unto every soul, as with the voice of thunder, repentance, and the plan of redemption, that they should repent and come unto our God, that there might not be more sorrow upon all the face of the earth.

"But behold, I am a man, and do sin in my wish; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me.

"I ought not to harrow up in my desires the firm decree of a just God for I know that he granteth unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or unto life; yea, I know that he allotteth unto men according to their wills, whether they be unto salvation or unto destruction.

"Yea, and I know that good and evil have come before all men; he that knoweth not good from evil is blameless; but he that knoweth good and evil, to him it is given according to his desires; whether he desireth good or evil, life or death, joy or remorse of conscience.

"Now seeing that I know these things, why should I desire more than to perform the work to which I have been called?

"Why should I desire that I was an angel, that I could speak unto all the ends of the earth?

"For behold, the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word; yea. in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have; therefore we see that the Lord doth counsel in wisdom, according to that which is just and true.

"I know that which the Lord hath commanded me, and I glory in it: I do not glory of myself, but I glory in that which the Lord hath commanded me; yea, and this is my glory, that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God, to bring some soul to repentance; and this is my joy."

Providence is Over All

Many beautiful lessons might be drawn from, this passage of scripture, but I have only time to dwell upon one. It tells me that Providence is overall, and that he holds the nations in the hollow of his hand; that he is using not only his covenant people, but other peoples as well, to consummate a work, stupendous, magnificent, and altogether too arduous for this little handful of Saints to accomplish by and of themselves. Alma seems to have thought, for the moment, that man was doing God's work for him, instead of which it is God, who is doing his own work, and using men as his instruments. Nor is he limited in the choice of instruments to his own people. He sways the scepter over all nations, and they are all playing into his hands, knowingly or unknowingly. Alma knew this, but had momentarily lost sight of it.

"of their own nation and tongue."

All down the ages men bearing the authority of the Holy Priesthood— patriarchs, prophets, apostles and others, have officiated in the name of the Lord, doing the things that he required of them; and outside the pale of their activities other good and great men, not bearing the Priesthood, but possessing profundity of thought, great wisdom, and a desire to uplift their fellows, have been sent by the Almighty into many nations, to give term, not the fulness of the Gospel, but that portion of truth that they were able to receive and wisely use. Such men as Confucius, the Chinese philosopher ; Zoroaster, the Persian sage ; Gautama or Buddha, of the Hindus ; Socrates and Plato, of the Greeks; these all had some of the light that is universally diffused, and concerning which we have this day heard. They were servants of the Lord in a lesser sense, and were sent to those pagan or heathen nations to give them the measure of truth that a wise Providence had allotted to them.

Other Auxiliaries

And not only teachers— not poets and philosophers alone; but inventors, discoverers, warriors, statesmen, rulers, et al. These also have been used from the beginning to help along the Lord's work — mighty auxiliaries in. the hands of an Almighty God, carrying out his purposes, consciously or unconsciously.

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew them as we will."**

The God of Israel used Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, to punish his chosen people for their sins. Jeremiah the Prophet was sent with the word of the Lord to Zedekiah, king of Judah, commanding him to submit to the Lord's "servant" — this same Nebuchadnezzar. And because Zedekiah refused to obey, a terrible fate befell him; his kingdom was overthrown, his eyes were put out, and he and his people were carried away captive into Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar was a great king; he built the "Hanging Gardens," one of the seven wonders of the world ; but he arrogated to himself the glory for what God had done, and had to be humbled to the dust, and sent forth to eat grass like the ox, until "seven times" had passed over him, and he had learned the lesson "that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will."

Babylon was overthrown by Cyrus the Persian, a great and good monarch, called by the Lord "his anointed," and named by prophecy more than a hundred years before he was born. Cyrus was instrumental in restoring the captive Jews to their own country, that they might rebuild Jerusalem in time for the Savior's advent.

When then Medo-Persian empire 'became corrupt, it was overthrown by Alexander the Great. Alexander conquered the world and "wept," it is said, "because there were no more worlds to conquer." He died a drunkard, or from! a fever caused by excess of drink. But was that all he did? Dean Farrar says of him and of the great service he unwittingly rendered to the cause of Christ: "The immense field covered by the conquests of Alexander gave to the civilized world a unity of language, without which it would have been, humanly speaking, impossible for the earliest preachers to have made known the good tidings in every land which they traversed." "Wherever he went," says the historian McCabe, "he left the Greek language, . . .all powerful in drawing the nations of the old world into a closer and more intimate contact with each other. . .. At a later period, the Hebrew Scriptures, translated into Greek, were made accessible to the whole world, and the way was thus paved for the mission of Him of whom these Scriptures testify."

This also from Farrar: "The rise of the Roman Empire created a political unity which reflected in every direction the doctrines of the new faith. The Gospel emanated from the capital of Judea; it was preached in the tongue of Athens; it was diffused through the Empire of Rome; the feet of its earliest missionaries traversed the solid structure of undeviating roads by which the Roman legionaries — 'those massive hammers of the whole earth' — had made straight in the desert a highway for our God. Semite and Aryan had been unconscious instruments in the hands of God for the spread of a religion which, in its first beginnings, both alike detested and despised."

America, A Nursing Mother

Coming down to later times, we have but to open the Book of Mormon to see how the Spirit of the Lord rested upon a man among the Gentiles, impelling him across the great .waters to the Land of Zion, a land reserved by Providence for the triumph of truth and freedom in the last days — the place for the building of the New Jerusalem and the beginning of the work of preparation that will have to be done before the Lord comes in his glory. Columbus was inspired to discover America for this purpose, though he knew it not. After him came the Pilgrim Fathers ; and then Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, and other Patriots of the Revolution, all moved upon by the same Spirit, to create the mighty fabric of this great Republic, a free nation, guaranteeing liberty to its citizens of every creed and of no creed, and raised up by the Almighty to play the part of a nursing mother to the restored Church of Christ.

True, the Latter-day Saints have been persecuted under the Stars and Stripes in various States of the Union; but we must not make the mistake of supposing that it was because of the Flag, or of the Constitution, or of the genius of the American government, that these deplorable happenings took place. No; it was not because, but in spite of them. Those persecutions were inflicted by lawless force, by mob violence, ever to be execrated and condemned by every true patriot. Let us credit our noble Nation with what it has done in the direction of filling its God-given mission. In no other land — in no other nation upon this land, would the Lord's people have been treated with the same degree of consideration. In no other country on earth would this work have been permitted to come forth. This nation was founded purposely, that the Church and Kingdom of God might be established and all nations bask in its light and share in its blessings.

Truths Triumph Inevitable

We must never allow ourselves to grow misanthropic or fearful concerning the outcome. The success of this work is assured. The triumph of Truth is inevitable. The clouds, may gather, the billows rage, the tempests burst in fury; but the unerring Pilot is at the helm, and the Ship steered by Him, will weather every storm.

"Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne. Yet that scaffold sways the future,

And behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow,

Keeping watch above his own."***

I'll go where you want me to go, hymn 270*

** Line from Hamlet

**Section from The Present Crisis, an 1844 Poem by James Russell Lowel